Our return to Civilisation

After frontier counrty Erzurum felt like paradise. The hotel was clean and nice with a refidgerator, bathroom and balcony and there were people on the street (even two or three women!) Initially, we showed our passport to every policeman we encountered but after a day also this Eastern habit lost itself.

Erzurum is a pleasant medium-size city in central Anatolia, famous for its seljuc architecture which we love. The Erzurum people also fixed our very expensive camera lense for which we love them! We spent our time there mainly strolling through the bazaar and taking pictures of the various graves (called tuerbesi) and medreses (seljuk monastaries and seminaries) with all their beautiful reliefs. And we did laundry in our beautiful bathroom. One thing we miss about travelling in non-touristy areas is that there truly is no infrastructure for travellers. hotel laundry would have cost more that the room itself!

We also ate our fortieth Turkish breakfast (on a beautiful terrace overlooking the city)which consisted of bread, honey, butter, goat cheese, black olives, cucumber, tomato and an egg. Believe it or not, breakfast has been identical (and I mean identical, no, no green olives, they are always black)in every single place (except for that lousy hotel in Cappadocia where they ran out of honey...). It must be something they do to help us tourists deal with too much variety. There is even much more variety with diner! There is lamb, lamb and lamb! And of course rice and those hot peppers! I am not sure why but my favourite Turkish restaurant in Switzerland overs more different dishes than all restaurants we have seen outside of Istanbul taken together...I guess our hope is on Azeri cuisine (Now that is a scary statement)!

so long